WORTH WATCHING: Modernized ‘House of Usher,’ ..."Mike Flanagan (The Haunting of Hill House) turns to Edgar Allan Poe for inspiration in his latest horror project, a contemporary twist on The Fall of the House of Usher."The Fall of the House of UsherNetflix
SERIES PREMIERE
Mike Flanagan, the macabre mastermind behind modernized homages to Shirley Jackson (
The Haunting of Hill House) and Henry James (
The Haunting of Bly Manor), tackles Edgar Allan Poe’s oeuvre in an eight-part corporate immorality tale. The Ushers are now symbolic kin to the Sackler pharmaceutical dynasty, reaping a fortune from peddling addictive drugs. These venal, cruel vultures are dealt a bloody hand of karmic justice by a mischievous shape-shifting vixen (perfectly cast Carla Gugino) as the heirs of CEO Roderick Usher (Bruce Greenwood) meet inventively grisly fates inspired by Poe’s haunting inventions (a black cat, a tell-tale heart, even a pit-and-pendulum callback). Among the welcome additions to Flanagan’s repertory company: Mary McDonnell as Roderick’s ice-cold sister Madeline and
Star Wars icon Mark Hamill as the family’s gravel-throated fixer, Arthur Pym.